Re: Short Mountain Distillery TN

Originally Posted by tmckenzie

Having seen moonshine produced with sugar first hand, what I have seen is soured whole corn and sugar is the ingredients. The first run works slow. Then the next run gets a lot better cause they empty the still into the fermenters, sour mash. The dead yeast cells I know now gave the yeast the needed nutrients.

Ok, I read a paper on this a few years back (I'll look for it, RArnold). Well, not this precise process, but adding stillage to a sugar fermentation.

If I recall correctly, there was a three-fold reduction in ethyl acetate production. Levels were still elevated when compared to all-malt, however.

Re: Short Mountain Distillery TN

AGarrison, I did read that in some of his press stuff too. I thought it was cool that he brought the old times together. If you are going to make a moonshine type product, some real guys would be helpful to start.

Re: Short Mountain Distillery TN

RArnold, the first cite I could find is entitled Wort Composition and Beer Flavor: The Influence of Some Amino Acids on the Formation of Higher Aliphatic Alcohols and Esters, Simon Engan, Nov. 1969 Journal of Institute of Brewing.

They adding increasing amounts of pure glucose to all-malt worts (up to 50% glucose), and found that ethyl acetate formation increased slightly, and Amyl Alcohols really went through the roof. The rest of the study shows how to temper these reactions by adding various amino acids.

I'll keep looking for more direct info. for you. It appears at first glance that Amyl Alcohol production is the real issue, rather than ethyl acetate, even though EA levels did go up as the sugar concentration increased. But again, this is only 50% sucrose and 50% brewer's wort, so it's not an exact parallel to what we were discussing in terms of table sugar fermentations.

Cheers. And by the way, I find your yeast work in TX to be fascinating.

From article:The purpose ofthis study was to determine and compare the levels ofproduction of several esters and higher alcohols, under constant fermentation conditions using several brewing strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, when either glucose, fructose or maltose was employed as the sole carbohydrate source in shaking flask fermentations. Wort fermentations were also undertaken. Levels of ester-synthesising enzymes present in glucose and maltose grown cells were also investigated.

They found that out of all the sugars fermented, the sugar that released less (in most cases, far less) ethyl acetate, isoamyl acetate, propanol, and isobutanol was maltose.